Subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Stuttering via HDSP, Cardbus, Multiface?
From: derek holzer (derek_AT_x-i.net)
Date: Fri Mar 26 2004 - 13:53:39 EET
Hi all,
>>My machine has is 2.8 Pentium 4, plenty of horsepower, and two pcmcia
>>slots (only one works with hdsploader for some reason).
>
> wait ... i can only use one cardbus slot, too ... can you check the
> irqs of your slots? (mine are 5 and 11)
There are two types of PCMCIA slots: type I and type II. My guess is
that Type II has double bandwidth, and therfore is the only one which is
suitable for the HDSP. I also have an HDSP, and I can confirm that only
one slot works with it, the one which 'cat /proc/interrupts' and 'lspci
-v' reports as a Type II, irregardless of IRQ.
I have a very unrecommended cardbus controller in my laptop [Ricoh], and
it caused me a world of hurt getting the HDSP running. Can you tell us
what cardbus controller you have in your laptop?
A few things that I tried in the long battle of getting my HDSP working:
1) Boot with acpi=off or pci=noacpi in your bootloader arguments. This
got the card onto a mostly reasonable IRQ arrangement. The HDSP shares
IRQ 9 with lots of stuff [usb, onboard soundcard, eth0, etc], but isn't
forced to 11, where it has lower priority than all that stuff and on top
of that is sharing with the graphics controller. Or IRQ 5, which I got
from time to time and is totally inappropriate for audio. Come to think
of it, if your HDSP is on IRQ 5, it might just explain your terrible
playback and sluggish response. hmmmm........
2) Switched distros several times. I know it sounds like voodoo, but I
really believe that something in the automagic configurations which
Mandrake and Red Hat do made an unhealthy situation for my pcmcia
bridge. I noticed much fewer problems running the HDSP with Debian, and
almost none at all running Gentoo, which my laptop currently runs under.
With Mandrake or Red Hat, the situation was hopeless, and I exhausted
several mailing lists with questions about how to get it right ;-)
This distro thing worked out great for me, but flies in the face of
logic for many Linux folks, who assure me that the only real difference
in distros is the package manager. Of course, it's the most radical
solution, and maybe not the one for your problem. Start with your ACPI
settings and check your IRQs and then maybe you'll see what needs to
happen next.
Good luck,
d.
-- derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ---Oblique Strategy # 55: "Do the last thing first"
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